Jeje Kafigi

Abstract:
Firms strive to grow and survive. The survival chances can be fostered by a list of business strategies,
such as strategic alliances. Different types of strategic alliances exist. This study groups
the typology into manufacturing and non-manufacturing alliances. Little research has been done
on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), particularly Medium-Sized Enterprises (MEs), from
the manufacturing industry in the least developed countries such as Tanzania in relation to
the alliance typology and partnering firms’ survival chances that can be explained by an ability
to accumulate resources and reduce both costs and risks. A cross-sectional survey design and
multistage probability sampling technique enabled the participation of 398 CEOs from three
zones of Tanzania whose options were collected through questionnaires. In the context of this
paper, both the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Multiple Regression Analysis (MRA)
are applied to explain the two main alliance types and how they predict firms’ survival chances
respectively. To a great extent, we find that there exists a relationship between alliance typology
and both the reduction of costs and risks, as well as resource accessibility. However, we argue
that partners could adopt alliance types that concurrently reduce the costs and risks; but at the
same time enabling them to acquire resources if they would carefully study and establish the link
between costs, risks and resources.
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